Gregory Warner

Gregory Warner is NPR's East Africa Correspondent. His reports cover the diverse issues and voices of a region that is experiencing unparalleled economic growth as well as a rising threat of global terrorism. His coverage can be heard across NPR and NPR.org.

Before joining NPR, Warner was a senior reporter for American Public Media's Marketplace, where he endeavored to make the economics of American health care vivid and engaging. He's used puppets to illustrate the effects of Internet diagnoses on the doctor-patient relationship. He composed a Suessian cartoon to explain why health care job growth policies can increase the national debt. His musical journey into the shadow world of medical coding won the 2012 Best News Feature award from the Third Coast International Audio Festival.

Prior to Marketplace, Warner was a freelance radio producer reporting from conflict zones around the world. He climbed mountains with smugglers in Pakistan for This American Life, descended into illegal mineshafts in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Marketplace's "Working" series, and lugged his accordion across Afghanistan on the trail of the "Afghan Elvis" for NPR's Radiolab.

Warner's radio and multimedia work has won awards from Edward R Murrow, New York Festivals, AP, PRNDI, and a Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. He has twice won Best News Feature from the Third Coast International Audio Festival in 2009 and 2012.

Warner earned his degree in English at Yale University. He is conversant in Arabic.

As part of the project A Nation Engaged , NPR and member stations are exploring America's role in the world heading into the presidential election. Everyone knew President Obama would say something about gay rights when he visited Kenya last summer. Many American activists were pressing him to publicly condemn Kenya's colonial-era law making homosexuality a crime. But Kenyan gays and lesbians were wary. In the weeks leading up to Obama's visit, Kenyan politicians took to...

The videos trickled out slowly on social media — slowly, because those posting them had to use special software to get around what seemed to be a government-imposed internet block. This video showed thousands of people in the streets of the northern Ethiopian town of Gondar. The size of the crowd was significant in a country where civil protests are usually banned. Even more significant? The location o f this anti-government protest. For the last nine months, protests have erupted further...

Editor's note: This post is an adaptation of the latest episode of the Invisibilia podcast and program, which is broadcast on participating public radio stations. In high school, Mireille Umutoni Sekamana aspired to be a club president rather than just secretary. And why not? She lives in a country where women seem to face no barriers, no discrimination. In the Parliament, for example, women hold more than half the seats. No country has a better record...

What's red and gold and hailed by most economists? The new African Union passport, unveiled this week at the African Union Summit in Kigali, Rwanda, promises a solution to a major drag on African trade: the red tape that makes it harder for African businesspeople, tourists and workers to travel around their own continent. More than half of the 54 African countries require entry visas for other Africans, according to the Africa Visa Openness Report . Those visas can take days...

In 2010, 12-year-old Nathan Eyasu became one of the first skateboarders in Ethiopia. He bought an old board off a guy on the street for a dollar, learned some tricks off YouTube, and proceeded to shock his neighbors like Marty McFly in Back to The Future . "They'd be like, 'Is there a magnet in there?' " Eyasu says, laughing. "Nobody knew what skateboarding is." Today, he has plenty of company. In April, Ethiopia opened its first skateboard park, on the grounds of a government youth...

The Oromo Federalist Congress, an opposition party in Ethiopia, represents the largest ethnic group in the country, the Oromo. Yet its office in the capital Addis Ababa is virtually deserted, with chairs stacked up on tables. A chessboard with bottle caps as pieces is one of the few signs of human habitation. In a side office, the party's chairman, Merera Gudina, explains why the place is so empty: Almost everyone has gone to prison. The deputy chairman? Prison. The party secretary general?...

To burn or not to burn? That is the question facing African countries in their fight against the multimillion-dollar illegal ivory trade. Kenya, which introduced the world to burning ivory in 1989, still thinks it's a good idea. On Saturday morning, it hosted the most spectacular burn event yet: The tusks of nearly 7,000 elephants — 105 metric tons' worth — were set alight in 11 separate pyres in Nairobi's National Park. The tusks, taken from elephants that were poached as well as from those...

There's a stealthy nighttime battle taking place on the African savannah. It's a place where poachers stalk their prey — the animals that graze there. And they, the poachers, are in turn stalked by rangers trying to bring them in. Now those rangers are trying out some new equipment using the kind of technology pioneered by the military. On an evening ride in Kenya's Maasai Mara, park ranger Martine Cheruiyot hoists a 20-pound gray tube and screws it on top of a jeep. It looks a bit like an X...

Employers want to hire the best and the brightest to get the job done. So do terrorist groups. In Africa, terrorist groups are actively recruiting well-educated boys and girls. The groups want recruits who can be leaders, who know how to give orders, who can boost the brand on social media. One Kenyan teacher is fighting back — and his efforts have made him a candidate for the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize, which comes with a $1 million award. His name is Ayub Mohamud. A business...

It's known as the only national park in the world with a skyscraper skyline. Nairobi National Park, in the Kenyan capital, boasts elephants, giraffe, rhinos and lions roaming freely across a savannah a mere 4-mile drive from downtown. But last night, the proximity of urban and natural environments got a bit too close. Up to six lions escaped the confines of the park and were seen wandering in a residential area. Kenya Wildlife Service officials expressed bafflement Friday when reporters asked...

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: We go overseas now to Africa. The question is, how can survivors of sexual violence get help an closure in a country that seems determined to ignore them and move on? Nearly a thousand women in Kenya reported being raped during the ethnic clashes that followed the country's disputed election there eight years ago. Advocates say these survivors have been passed over. NPR's Gregory Warner has more. GREGORY...

It may not sound like a reward, being a soldier chosen to fight as a peacekeeper in war-torn Somalia or Central African Republic. But for soldiers from one of the poorest countries in the world, Burundi, it's seen as an opportunity of a lifetime. Soldiers angle to wear the blue helmet — and to pull an international salary and other benefits, covered by the United Nations. But just how far will soldiers go to obtain a peacekeeping post? Some may be going to troubling extremes. The U.N. has...

When Netflix announced its expansion to 130 countries , including Kenya, Nairobi-based IT specialist Mark Irungu says he was thrilled. He had never failed to find ways to stream Netflix, even when it was blocked in Kenya. But, he says, touching his heart, "that morning, when I saw that Netflix is global? I can't compare it to anything else." And then he delivers one of the sweetest analogies about media access I have ever heard: "Think of it as a child who...

It's a hard life for Tanzanian public officials these days. No more driving your limousine to villages. No more flying first class to meetings in Europe. You can't even send Christmas cards on the taxpayer's dime. President John Magufuli, elected in October, has banned these things. He canceled the country's Independence Day celebrations, saying it would be shameful to spend millions of dollars on fancy parties and military parades in a country battling cholera. And he even restricted the...

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript CORNISH: Japanese-style massage by blind South Sudanese - that was the painted wooden sign on our correspondent, Gregory Warner - that our correspondent, Gregory Warner, spotted in the South Sudanese capital of Juba. And he saw that side after a week of reporting on a civil war that still simmers there. GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: It was my fifth day in South Sudan. I had taken cargo planes and helicopters to U.N. camps to...

Political violence has engulfed the African nation of Burundi. The U.N. Security Council has passed a resolution to try and prevent potential genocide, while refugees have been pouring into neighboring Rwanda. Among them is a group of musicians who fled their homes without any instruments. Bertrand Ninteretse is a Burundian video artist and rapper who goes by the name Kaya Free. In April, he videotaped the death of a fellow protester shot by Burundian police. The protests were targeting the...

It's a recurring question throughout many parts of Africa: How long should a leader stay in power? Rwanda's President Paul Kagame is the only president the country has had since 2000, and his tenure has been marked by stability and relative prosperity. Now he's toying with the idea of running for a third term. Such moves by presidents in the neighboring states of Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo have led to unrest. Last Friday, more than 90 percent of Rwandan voters said yes to...

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: The tiny African nation of Burundi is on a slow burn, and many fear it's in danger of repeating the history of its neighbor, Rwanda. Since a battle over the presidency turned violent this past spring, the word genocide has been in the air. In the past few days, scores were killed by police who went door-to-door dragging people out of their houses and shooting them, some with their hands tied behind...

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Pope Francis arrives in Kenya tomorrow for the start of a six-day African tour. His visit will also include stops in Uganda and the Central African Republic. This is the Pope's first visit to the continent, and there's a long list of issues he's likely to address, including religious intolerance, the environment and poverty. NPR's Gregory Warner is in Nairobi and joins us. Hey Gregory. GREGORY WARNER,...

Can you fight terrorists the same way you battle ordinary criminals? A prominent Kenyan crime fighter, Mohamud Saleh, is betting you can. He's testing his theory in Garissa, a city in northeastern Kenya thrust into the spotlight this April when Islamist militants attacked a campus dorm, killing 147 students. Long before Garissa had a terrorism problem, it had a problem with bandits, as Daud Yussuf, a Kenyan journalist, remembers. Back in 1993, Yussuf was a ninth-grader whose father couldn't...